Tariq A Baloch, UNJUST ENRICHMENT AND CONTRACT Oxford: Hart Publishing (www.hartpub.co.uk), 2009. xxiii + 208 pp. ISBN 9781841139081. £45.
| Pages | 530-532 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2010.0316 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
The law of unjust(ified) enrichment has been the subject of considerable academic debate for much of the past twenty-five years. This monograph constitutes a new star in the ever expanding galaxy of enrichment literature, and it is a star which shines brightly. In particular the text provides new interpretative insights into the historical development of the law of unjustified enrichment in English law, as well as examining the “borderland” between the laws of contract and unjust enrichment (v). In setting the scene for the titular concern of the text Baloch addresses familiar shell-marked battlefields: the role of equity in relation to enrichment law, the struggle between approaches based upon unjust factors and those based upon a Civilian-inspired absence of basis, and the difficulties experienced with the implied contract “heresy”.
Therefore, Baloch's contextual groundwork delves deeply into the crucial eighteenth-century conceptualisation of indebitatus claims, as well as illustrating the importance of contemporary procedure, concluding that such claims were not contractual and rested upon a fictitious promise. Further, the procedural flexibility afforded by an indebitatus claim made it attractive to claimant and judge alike because of its efficiency and broader scope for theorising. In turn, Lord Mansfield consciously developed the action for these reasons and did not draw upon an explicit equitable basis in
Having set out his doctrinal history of unjust enrichment, Baloch considers the narrower doctrinal interface between contract and unjust...
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